Jake nodded. She shifted from one foot to another and Jake was enveloped in a waft of Molly’s scent, which did not evoke happy memories.

“Is her leg better?”

“She’s all right.”

Why was she hanging round like a great blancmange? Getting up, he ran the sponge under the tap and plunged it into the saddle soap, adding: “The whip — it isn’t here.”

Tory gazed at her feet, twisting a button on Mrs. Maxwell’s mac. Then she noticed what he was reading.

“Oh, there’s Rupert Campbell-Black. Horrible man.”

Jake looked up, slightly more accommodating. Tory blushed again.

“I’m sorry. Is he a friend of yours?”

There was a pause.

“I hate his guts,” said Jake.

“Oh, so do I,” said Tory. “He’s so vicious and contemptuous and, well, bloody-minded. How did you come across him?”

“We were at school together.”

Tory looked amazed.

“Prep school,” added Jake. “I was a day boy. Mum was the cook, so the headmaster let me in free.”

“Oh, goodness, he must have been an absolutely poisonous small boy.”

Taking a nail, Jake pushed out the saddle soap that had got stuck in the cheek-strap holes.

“Poisonous,” he agreed. “He made Eichmann look like a fairy godmother.”

“He’s so rich,” said Tory, “that lots of mothers are after him, but he’s only after one thing.”

“What’s that?” said Jake, to embarrass her.

Tory swallowed. “Well, bed and things. He’s awfully promiscuous.” She pronounced it promise-kew-us. “And he never answers invitations; just rolls up with his current girlfriend and leaves after half an hour if he’s bored. He let off thunderflashes at Queen Charlotte’s. Lady Surrey was livid.”

“He obviously hasn’t changed,” said Jake. “I should have thought Harrow or the army might have knocked it out of him.”

“I think it made him worse,” sighed Tory. “He gets a little gang of cronies round him and manages to be even nastier.”

Nothing unites people like a good bitch. Jake let her rattle on as he put the bridle together again and hung it up. Then he went to reapply Africa’s poultice. Tory followed him, longingly watching the tender way his hands ran over the mare, caressing her polished shoulder and her sleek veined legs. Africa nuzzled him, breathing through her velvet nostrils with love and trust.

“She’s so beautiful,” said Tory wistfully.

The swelling had practically disappeared. Jake redid the bandages and readjusted her summer rug. He wished Tory would buzz off and leave him alone to nurse his misery. As he came out of the stable, shutting the door behind him, the rain stopped. He looked at her round, anxious face, her clean flopping hair and enormous bosom straining against the dark blue T-shirt. There was kindness in her eyes. He looked at his watch.

“Let’s go and have a drink.”

Tory looked at him stupidly.

“A drink,” he repeated mockingly. “The pubs are open. You’re eighteen, aren’t you?”

“Yes, of course I am. Gosh, thanks awfully.”

As they walked to the pub, Jake noticed the hawthorns were rusting slightly but still smelt like fresh soap, and the wet, hot nettles gave off a heady blackcurrant scent. The cricketers were running out onto the pitch, anxious to get all the game they could into the last half hour.

It was the first time Tory had been taken by a man into a pub; in fact, the first time a man had voluntarily asked her out at all. My first date, she thought excitedly. An old woman was buying Guinness and putting it in a black canvas bag. In the corner, two men with sun-reddened faces, their wives wearing white cardigans and lots of cheap jewelry, had decided to break their journey on the way back to London and were drinking Pimm’s. What on earth was she going to drink? She hated beer, her mother said gin and orange was common, and she knew Buck’s Fizz involved champagne, which was expensive. Her mind was a complete blank. She looked desperately around.

“I’d like a Pimm’s,” she said.

Jake sighed. He’d hoped she’d drink something cheap, like cider, or better still, orange juice. That meant he’d have to have beer instead of the double whisky he so badly needed.

Tory sat down, the furry moquette of the bench seat scratching her thighs. The pub was cool and dark and restful inside; the side door had been fastened back, and outside was a little garden full of wallflowers and irises and pale pink clematis scrambling over some rustic poles.

At first, the conversation was very stilted, but after a couple of Pimm’s, Tory’s tongue was loosened and suddenly, like a washing machine that’s been tugged open halfway through its cycle, everything came gushing out. What a disaster she was at dances, how she hated her finishing school, how ghastly Colonel Carter was, and how she couldn’t get on with her mother.

“Mummy likes Fen, because she’s pretty and funny and because she’s so young, but I’m an embarrassment to her and living proof that she’s over forty-five.”

“She made you go to all these dances because she’s looking for a husband,” said Jake. “D’you think she’s found one?”

“Oh, I hope not,” said Tory. “He’s so phony. He was hanging a picture for Mummy the other day and hit his thumb with the hammer and,” she went even redder, “he said booger instead of bugger.”

Jake hadn’t even brushed his hair before he came out, but it fell into place automatically. Tory ached to touch it. She felt as if someone had bewitched her, as if she was drowning and there was no coming up even for the third time. In a panic, she noticed he’d finished his drink. She’d been reading about Women’s Lib and someone called Germaine Greer. It was all right for women to buy drinks these days. She got a fiver out of her bag and handed it to Jake.

“Go on,” she said with a giggle, “we’re all equal.”

Jake shrugged and went to the bar. The cricketers had finished their game and flocked into the pub, and the barmaid was serving them with huge jugs of beer to pass around, so it was a few minutes before Jake got served. Tory sat in a haze of happiness; the longer he took, the longer they’d have. She looked at him slumped against the bar. He was so thin beside the beefy cricketers; she wished she could feed him up; she was sure he wouldn’t grumble about overdone beef and soggy potatoes. On the door near the Ladies’, a group of men were playing darts. Oh, dear, Cupid had scored a double top, straight into her heart.

Jake returned with the drinks and a packet of crisps.

“I don’t know why I’ve been telling you all these things,” said Tory. “You’re the one who needs cheering up. But you’re such a good listener.”

“I get plenty of practice. When you’ve got to take stupid women on long rides you develop a listener’s face. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re listening.”

Tory’s face fell. “I’m sorry,” she said humbly, starting to eat the crisps. “I didn’t mean to bore you.”

“You haven’t,” he said irritably.

“Who taught you to ride?” she asked.

“My father. He put me on a pony almost before I could walk.”

“How long ago did he die?” said Tory.

“I don’t know that he’s dead.”

Tory looked startled.

“He was a gypsy. He met my mother when he was hop-picking on part-time work. Her father was the keeper at the big house. He tried to settle down with my mother and get a steady job, but it was like caging a lark. One day, the wanderlust became too strong, so he walked out when I was about eight years old.”

“You must have missed him.”

“I did.” The third pint of beer had loosened his tongue and the world seemed a more hospitable place.

“So did my mother. She cried a lot, behind locked doors, and my grandfather went through all the photograph albums cutting my father’s picture out of the family groups.”

“So you might suddenly bump into him one day?”

“I doubt it,” said Jake, although he never passed a gypsy encampment or a fairground without having a look.

“Was he very good-looking?”

“My mother thought so. Two years after he left she waved me off to school and said she’d be in to cook the school dinner later. Then she put some cushions in front of the gas oven and that was that. All I remember is that all the masters and boys were particularly put out because we were supposed to be having treacle pudding that day.”

He suddenly glared at Tory, whose eyes had filled with tears. What the hell was he telling the soppy cow all this for? He hadn’t talked about his mother for years.

Tory couldn’t bear it. He’d lost his mother and his father and now he was going to lose Africa.

“Do you think Bobby Cotterel will really sell her?” she asked.

“ ’Course he will; doesn’t give a damn about her. He was grumbling the other day because Mrs. Wilton was threatening to put up the livery fees.”

The pub was filling up now and becoming noisy and clamorous. Tory looked at an obscene, pink pile of sausages, greasily glinting under a cover on the bar. How lovely to see food and for once not feel hungry.

“What will you do if Africa goes?”

“Get another job.”

“Around here?”

“No, up north probably. I doubt if Mrs. Wilton will give me a reference.”

“Oh, you mustn’t,” said Tory, aghast. “I mean — it’s so cold up north. I must go to the loo.”

She had difficulty negotiating the way to the Ladies’, cannoning off tables and cricketers like a baby elephant.

Oh, hell, thought Jake, as she narrowly missed a flying dart, she’s pissed.

Tory collapsed onto the loo and realized with the shock from the cold slab under her bottom that the seat cover was still down. She lifted it up. If I can manage to go on peeing for over twenty seconds, Jake will take me out again, she said to herself. By wriggling she made it last for twenty-two.